D.C. sniper set to be executed Tuesday

WASHINGTON — Seven years ago this month, the captured
Beltway snipers — John Allen Muhammad, then 41, and his accomplice, Lee Boyd
Malvo, 17 — were in federal custody, accused of 16 shootings and 10 murders.
They had set out to create a reign of terror in the Washington area to match
the 9-11 attacks of the year before.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft had a choice: He could
send them to be tried in Maryland, where most of the murders took place but
where the death penalty was on hold because of the specter of racial
unfairness. Or he could send them across the Potomac River to Virginia, the
site of three of the killings, where death sentences are carried out swiftly.

Ashcroft chose Virginia.

On Tuesday, Muhammad is scheduled to die by lethal injection
in a Virginia prison, his initial appeals having been dismissed by state and
federal judges.

"History has borne out the attorney general made the
right call," said Mark Corallo, who was Ashcroft's spokesman. "These
crimes were so brutally coldblooded and calculated."

Muhammad's new lawyers lodged a last set of emergency
appeals with the Supreme Court last week. Their main claim is that the case has
moved too quickly. They said judges in Virginia cut short the time for filing
appeals and refused to hold a single hearing after the trial.